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Thread: The Paper Boat and The Moon

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    Post The Paper Boat and The Moon

    A journey is as a journey is.One entity traverses a plain into another like the intertwining rivers that make up the land of Britain and the world. Like life to death, every journey is to the next a drastic game of dominoes causing an ever growing chain reaction to the final breath, on the operating table stitching the gap between one life to the next. The blood of the patient, memories, seep from the fresh cut pores onto tarnished ground to become stale and empty, ready to be cleaned away and in their shadow, replaced with another, a poor victim to that which is decay. Not just the decay of sentience or memory but the decay of all seeming possibilities extending from that point for a future. Decay affects far more than the living and the dead. They said I had a future. I was going to be a star, a master in language, a scientist, an astronaut. I would fly to the moon in a paper boat, to them, an impossible feat. But I would have done it. I would have used the impossible as a platform for the idea to not once, ever give up. It never happened of course, my naivety spread beyond belief. I have changed as a human being. I have been warped into more of a human, but at the same time less. I can no longer be my dreams, I would never reach them. My frail little arms were too short to grasp the fruit of Eden. A pity. It's a pity that my sprouting tree, my future endeavours for which each path to the top is different and only traversed once, is a small one. I would never be a complete person. My decay was not and will not be on my terms.

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    They say it smells like purity, that dying breath. I see fit the definition of such a word as I like. Such a profoundly wide detailing statement could link to any thought or vivid illusion. I think it smells like daises. I still reminisce to that precious scent.

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    I grew up in a mild climate. The wind never faded in that quaint little village, but like the sensation of breathing it felt like it should be there; it sustained the landscape, making it breath with me and the rest of the tranquil, waiting world. A crazy thought to assume the world taking breath is something that would cross my mind many a time in my youth. The one place I could call beatitude was the breathing field in which so much happened.

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    On the 19th of September 1980 I was born and upon those fields I came out of my mother's womb and in perfect, harmonised synchronisation we both took breath for the first ever time. My progenitors described it as a weird day.

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    Unlike the mild winters of standard in my part of Scotland, the day was like one of fairy tales. My forebears took a walk on the shores of grass that surrounded our civilised island on the sea of nature right before her waters broke. Weather men all around Scotland from the east to west predicted heavy rainfall and floods but on that day?

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    No, it did not rain. That day was said to defy all cloud analysations, scientific studies and religious prediction.

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    Just for me and the breathing field of Loch Hollen.

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    I visited the field so many times when I was young. It was my place. When I felt the ultimate feelings of despair, grief, anxiety and even depression the field would comfort me.

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    Like the beating heart of a mother to a defenceless baby that ocean of grass would comfort me.

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    And so in a way it became my mother. No human could display the compassion that MY green, cut mother could. No mother could be the foundation for all sorts of wonderful thing. The frogs and lady bugs became my siblings and the damp of the grass dew became my mothers, natures, tears.

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    Every morning and noon I would go to my field and sit there. I would listen. Everything in the world seemed to converge on that point. And I would welcome its opinion. I was a scholar to the grass and the trees. I was a pupil of the flowers and the dirt and I was myself, the only time I ever really was myself. My smell of bliss is the smell of dew in the morning. The fragrance of thousands of flowers all emitting wonderful scents at the same time, like a holy orchestra, it was the only true great bliss I had.

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    Later years of my childhood behaved in the same way. I would always go to my field and listen. I remember many an event where I would be contested and mocked for my addiction to the open fields of Loch Hollen but never did I stop my visits. It was almost on clockwork, my need and action of visiting such a place. Like the rest of the world was a shadow, I lingered in the light of the meadow, like a moth to a flame, engrossed in it. Like Icarus, one day I would ascend but upon my paper boat, and I would proceed to close to the light that puzzled me so. That would be the day I died. That would be the day I was complete. Of course, in those times of old I had no idea of the end of my life, nor did I care for them. All I needed was my moorland and its calming nature to keep my young mind satisfied. My non-genetic mother of a field was the largest help to me. It would tell me all its woes and I would tell it mine. It was nature I had to thank for pushing me through my early teenage years without care or pain. I owed it my life.

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    But then it went away. Like a house fire, all of my hope and happiness was burnt into ash leaving the smell of charred dreams in the air. That was no bliss. My family had chosen to move to London for reasons of business and I was forced to go to, despite my constant defence opposing such a thing.

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    I was plucked from my nest like a pre-mature bird, I felt like I had abandoned all hope for survival out in the further world, further than the rolling hills and far away from the nest of my mother, safety, home. I would have squawked in anguish and pain if I could. I had no mouth that would be heard back then, and to my genetic architects I was no more than a solemn teenager rather than a captain of a capsized paper ship, calling for help, in fear of being stranded in an unknown world.

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    My paper boat was set alight that day. It was not by the intense light nor the moon I intended to reach but the burning hate of a madman, or those whom I caution to assume fear the unknown and sought to stop others from reaching it. A baby with his dummy lost, it felt. So belittled by a blighted toy, a fraction of my wit or my opinion! I really did lose all hope that day. As small as it seemed to an observer, this test subject had feelings to, and he just lost his dummy.

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    Life in a city was more dead than breathing. Rigor mortis had already set in for places like London. Tall towers rose above the foggy, dredged body they called the floor and nothing had a pulse. The tarmac of the roads did not respond to my feet gently standing upon them no more so than madly stomping on them like an angry troll from fantasy lore. Large and dumb they were, like the buildings. If anything, they were tombstones. They did not represent life or death to me. It was a depressing immortality. Statues that live much longer than any man, but breathing? A beating heart? No. Those bricks were suspended in a half-life, forever stuck in a time-frame where all was still and quiet. Decay still got there though. It was visible on every building's exterior like some white band on someone's wrists, a death warrant, a noose hung from a mast, standing still in the stale bed of fog and damp humidity. Every building was a noose. No longer could I gaze up to the stars on an open field and observe every movement of every star millions upon millions of miles away. Lights, visual human pollution stopped that. I could no longer dream about sailing the stars on a paper boat, a beacon of impossibility becoming fact and knowledge, the sole effort of a life's work. It would have been me, the meadow and the paper boat. We would have explored all possible thought and saw wonders unknown to everyone and everything. But, as the dominoes toppled so did the dreams I held so dearly upon them.

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    Friends came and went living in the city. It was hard to connect to city dwellers despite all the effort I placed into conversing with them. No one could understand the dead environment they lived in. It was devoid of oxygen, every person I met was some anaerobic bacteria wanting to poison me with some belief or thought of theirs. I was too strong to listen. I could remember what it was to breath slowly and securely, and it was something these bacteria could not ever have. I would not tell them of my guardian dew or my listening blades of flowing grass as they would not listen. They would harm the trees and grass, erect those god forsaken nooses all over the landscape and kill or use the creatures, my family, residing upon it. A heartless machine it was. Heartless and dead. Each noose building had the populous hanging from them, trapping them like flies in a cobweb, they all hung so closely to their own preservation, their own life away from the spider, the noose, the corporations. Bellow the gallows was freedom. Me. I found my rest away from the webs and the noose but in the field bellow it, defending true freedom from cultivation and the construction of more noose buildings. I was raised, plucked from my simple life into a dead world full of lost dreams and hate. I came to despise London and everyone who lived there. I wanted home.

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    School was a difficult thing to comprehend. In my earlier years I was home schooled, I lived so very close to nature, and when I sung a carol to the lord each morning so did the birds, the bugs and the plants. In the city it was different. No voices would answer my prayers and no creature would sing with me. I began to depart from god. And with that, I slowly lost the shreds of hope I still had. Change was not a thing I appreciated at all. I passed every test I was given, for fear of a terrible future in a place I would not enjoy. It is, in reality a scam to assume such a thing is true at all. I no longer care for the trivialities of such futures as mine was to sail upon my paper boat, after all, not to be some book clerk or accountant.

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    My failure to believe in god was a weird experience. It was a birthing identity for me. No longer bound by the teachings of an old, lying book would I have to listen, I gained a thread of freedom that day, I slowed the falling dominoes and calmed my nerves, but one thing lingered in my mind. Existence after termination from the plane of reality. Hope of a life after death is quite an important ideology and state of mind, a loss of such belief comes to lead to depression, grief and hatred. The void that filled my mind had become the void I would be in after death, constantly suspended in a pit of nothing, no continence, no bliss, no meaning to the torture that was life to some, and to the greedy pigs, the killers? No punishment. Freedom from god was not always a good thing it seemed.

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    Freedom was like free falling. At every point in the fall I would feel the wind in my hair and the sweet rush of adrenaline seaming through my nerves, an organic electric shock going so fast as to make every single emotion amplify like a speaker plugged into the human brain. But at the end of my free falling venture, I would hit the ground and be thrust back into reality. A painful reality. And as my blood would swim into the open dock of the dirt, freedom would stab me in the back, and kill me. It was a sad state of affairs in all honesty. It could be said that one cannot experience freedom without oppression. They do cancel each other out. Without one feeling to amplify the other there is simply nothing at all. That is why I, despite confusion from benefactors and strangers alike, relish in sadness, for without it, where is the happiness? It's a beautiful cycle of opposites constantly repelling and attracting like a pair of magnets caught in a constant floating duel. Infinity is like water. It seeps through to the cracks in the wall of the emotional world from its starting point: reality and math. It creates such wonders like the theoretical, infinite balance that is the connection, and repulsion of depression, hate and oppression from happiness, acceptance and freedom.

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    It rained that day. It was a solemn, mutual rain. It felt like the nature I was so close to, had expressed its sadness on that day. It was one I remembered so vividly.The day started with a rush. A rush of signals crossing their synapses along the metro line that was my nerves to the destination, my hands and feet, giving me feeling once more to feel the textures of my pillow, and the warmth of my bed sheets which covered me like a cadaver pouch, which in the long run, is more saddening than one would have hoped. In the outside world of London the sun was in full height in the sky, a huge contrast between the dead skyline that was the city I lived in. It hung their not like a noose but like a bright beacon reminding me of my ambitions and predictions of a future me. It reminded me of the things that I wanted the most in my short life. I wanted my field, I wanted my freedom and I wanted my beacon in the thick polluted fog, the shining heaven visible in the night, and only the night, sky.

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    I wanted to sail to the moon on a paper boat, hit my dream, the apex in my tree of life and the point where I would smell the daisies I wanted to smell.

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    I thought that that day would have been a good day. I was to prepare my ladder, my ascent was to begin. I would climb through the clouds blocking my sight of ambition and see the peak of my mountain, my tree, my moon. It's hard to believe how close one can get to that goal, how immeasurably short the gap is between happiness, and dark, dark emotions. I was so close. So close. A trap in my plan was triggered, breaking the ladder, and leaving my ambitions lying broken on the floor like the same child that lost its dummy.

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    12:00 noon came and passed without event. The day took its time and to me, became a lazy one. Nothing was to happen on a slow Sunday, no birds had need to chirp. No flowers had need to bloom.

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    The room I had in my parents' home was like a stagnant pool in a cave locked deep underground. It was silent and unknown, dark and mysterious, but at the same time so very still. I could feel the fungi rapping themselves around my walls, preying on the damp, stagnant pool. The lack of wind and hollow humidity completed this vivid metaphor of mine. It was like I actually was sitting in a pool in the dark. No paper boat would set sail on such calm seas.

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    It went dark at 3:00pm. Not outside or inside my room, the light did not break and the sun did not set but my eyes did. It was like I was dying. One moment the picture in my camera was perfect, but like an amateur took control it became unfocused and useless, my eyes would not see for that moment, it was like my brain just gave up on them. It was like it saw no purpose for their existence if all they saw was the gallows, the nooses and the cobwebs. It seemed fitting for my brain to want to remove them from the connection to the world I had if all was dark anyway, but at such a non noteworthy time and date?

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    I felt like I was going to die. My mind rushed to its conclusion fairly quickly and the synapses that were rushing to their destinations were now running in overtime. It was the worse sensation I had ever felt. The smell of bliss was not in the air at that moment and I thought everything, my ambitions, my thoughts, my very fabric, existence was going to suddenly cease. A famous man once wrote that: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper". And that is how it felt. If felt like I was going to die so unknown, so restless, pre to any a peak in my life. It was like I gave up before reaching the climax of my story, like a badly written novel, I hadn't made an impact, in society, or made the world better in any way at all. Like a candle, I thought I was going to just flicker out. And for a moment: I did.

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    I woke up in a hospital at 6:00pm. I was unconscious for three hours. The first thing that greeted me was the cold roof above my bed. It was white and clean, dead. I would not have commonly associated the colour white with death but my mind warped. My opinion changed about hospitals. They were not just unnerving, but also very dead. In a place where people are cured from their ailments white should have represented a beacon for healing, not cleanliness, darkness and death. Once woken up, I was introduced to two doctors. They were hardly anything worth noting. They represented the building I was in: White, professional and dead. I was like a power cut, the doctors said. "A light just turned off for a second, we are just your electricians, I guess we had to change the bulb", they said. They said I would be FINE. It quickly turned out that the bulb wasn't the cause of the problem, it was the light socket itself. And that wasn't fixable. The electricians said no one in the world could fix it, and like that a stamp was placed on my head.

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    "Defective"

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    It was simply like that.

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    On the 5th of March 2001, I was diagnosed with Acute myelogenous leukaemia. It was too late found to be treated and I was told that I would die before I became Thirty. With a Whimper, not a bang.

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    The First thing I thought about once I heard the news was disappointment, I knew I would never become an old man. I wouldn't sit in front of my mortgage paid house with a pipe to smoke, recollecting the times I had in the past. No war tales, love stories, uplifting poetry or family moments. Just me. My Boat. My Tumour. There was no moon that would show itself now. My beacon had fizzled out, short circuited. Its batteries had run dry and now it was working on borrowed power, borrowed time. The Moon slowly started to fade ever more after that, my destination hindered, not by roadwork but by road ends. I physically couldn't reach my light at the end of the tunnel. Like a broken bomb, there would be no explosion, no event, just a disappointing stop to its ticking clock, counting to its end.

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    The second thing I felt?*

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    Fear.*

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    I abandoned god long before I knew I was going to die. I had no hope now. I would not see a heaven or an infinite life. I would only see the inside of a coffin and a plethora of mourners, crying over my death. If only I never grew from my naivety, and thought of an existent divine creator. I would have still thought I could reach the moon, I could have still reached the moon.

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    I was too young to die, I thought. I had seen too little, heard no song, experienced all but nothing. I wanted to see it all, I wanted to know everything, I wanted everything. Its selfish to even think about having everything though. If I had everything and knew everything, what else is there for others to have? If I had knowledge of all thing that ever did or will happen, the understanding of the universes, tides and beyond, what else is there for others to find out? If I had belief in god I could still have learnt the secrets of all, for I would be in heaven, the ultimate bliss. I would never reach the moon, heaven, in my shallow, dying self, no, I would go in spirit form to the heavens, the sky above. In spirit form I would fly with the birds above the clouds, the sun in the shadow less sky, no darkness to fear. Me and the birds would soar for an eternity, higher than the green trees. Forever...

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    But isn't that hell? I would be caught forever in the sky. Wouldn't it bore me? Would I not look forward to a final demise, would I not enjoy the escape from my Iron Maiden of a self? Its reliving to know at the end of all you get to leave the theme park, end the fun and finally rest. To something that lives forever, where is that leaving? Would one not regurgitate the junk food they ate, get bored of the rollercoaster, if they had been there and done it thousands and thousands of times. And not just for a foreseeable duration. No human can ever imagine infinity, not even the cleverest of minds. Infinity would be terrible to experience, because once someone has experienced everything, what is left? Boredom. Infinite boredom, forever. That is not a good thing at all. And I knew it.

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    And knowing that, I finally accepted my end. I knew that, though sooner than others, I would never have to deal with the pain of an infinite life. I would never answer all my questions, never find out the things I asked, never understand strange things like Quantum Physics or the lust for power and idiocy the human race had. But I would understand death. I would have a short time to learn of it, but I would understand. I would understand that once it was over, I would be free. My consciousness, my very fabric would dissolve, but as soluble as my mind is submerged in death, it would still be there. The pool of self extinction would still hold the properties that made me up, just scattered and broken. No matter what, I would still, in a form, exist. Memory will keep my atoms from destruction in the pool. Whether it be the wrist band I wear on my hand as a reminder of the sad, sad place I call the Hospital or the paper this is written on. As long as it exists, so do I. Death is not a thing I look forward to, but never the less, it will be a new beginning. I wouldn't know of the beginning, but I would be a part of it, my body and my conscious would be flickered out but some part of me, a part not explained by any science, would still be there. I would exist! And with that notion I knew, that despite the fact I would not make it in a life time, still reach the moon! My final destination would be reached, but I still felt dead inside.

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    I do hold dearly to my body and my life in the plain of reality. It's a place I know and acknowledge every day. Even those who segregate themselves from everything still reside on earth. Home is this world and to leave it would be painful, weird. It would be like leaving that field once again, something I never want to happen for the rest of the time I am alive. I would never know what leaving all of my senses behind would ever be like in any way, no simile could most likely ever describe what it would be like, so it is best to never delve that deep into the ocean. More so, when you cannot even swim.

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    In synchronisation with me being thrust into reality by my diagnosis, the clouds broke into tears. It was such a contrast to the events earlier in the day and though the rainfall was expected, it felt like it was for me. I was so close to nature in my youth, I guess we still new each other, even when disconnected by the metropolis of industry I lived in. It was like we were pen pals. I would walk through London some days and I would see a butterfly, flying beside me, like some natural webcam keeping tabs on me, it would follow me to my home, then rest in the pot of flowers outside of my door. It gave me a respect for the world. It seemed even when I was forced to leave my home in Loch Hollen nature still wanted me back. I wanted to go back. I had to turn down the notion of leaving many a time due to the anvil around my ankle, my studies, my "future" and my family. And although hope seemed lost of returning, the green would not give in. I could not escape my life away from home, but I could not escape home. It was a constant reminder of the place I should be in life. I should have been in that field. I should have been home.

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    And like that, I knew what I would do. No longer bound by studies and future I knew I could return home, be it my final wish, or one before it. I would go home! No longer was I the child who lost his dummy, I found it, I just had to grab it, take it into my arms and be happy again. Death to me was not the burden I thought it would be, it was no release or good thing, but it freed me. I was no longer held under the water by the concrete that was getting a job or tending to a family, I could resurface: Breath!

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    But first I had to leave hospital.

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    Days and days went past, many visitors came to my ward in the hospital, the special ward, the area for those who would not live for much longer. I thought of it as the queue to the River Styx, my finale, my end. I was the only person in that ward though, everyone else had either died, or escaped the prison to be elsewhere. After a time the visitors started to lessen in numbers, it was like they gave up on me, knew I was a lost cause. I understood their feelings and knew that they had other things to do rather than put up with something that could not even repay their gratitude or time. I was capsized. I could not escape, no one would call for help, no matter what the ship would never sail again. I hit the iceberg. I did think myself unsinkable. I thought I would be the greatest person to ever live. Einstein of the 21st century! Oh how that turned out well. Instead I was in a hospital on my own, with no one even caring or acknowledging my existence. I had time to wonder about great things while I was in hospital, how to be happy, how to be free, how to end it. I did think about the way I would exit the world a lot. I didn't want to die within the walls of the hospital nor the walls of my house in London. If felt apart from me, it clashed with my feelings to die in such a place, I did not conform to living in a city. If felt so... dead. And to die in such a place that's dead? It's depressing. Death is not a bad thing, nor is it a good thing, and to die in a place full of bad? Negatives in colour, emotion and attitude? No it's not something I wanted. It seemed that everything I thought about in my white walled prison, every question answered, always ended up in me thinking about my breathing field, my sea of green, my moon. I had to leave there and then. I had to go!

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    Inspiration took hold of me and I began to think of ways to leave hospital and go home to Loch Hollen. I learnt of train routes to get to my field. I learnt of bus routes to. Every waking second I was searching for a way to get there but answers would not come. I could not set afloat on my Paper Boat unless I knew how. But how?

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    I could drive. I got my driver's licence when I became 18. I could drive! My brain neutralised all thoughts of reason or discussion and instead blindly focused on attaining the one goal it set to from the beginning of life. For once I could take a path through the branches of my tree and find one that reaches up to the sky rather than fall back downwards into the dirt, back to the place it started.

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    After feeling Disappointment, fear and acceptance I finally felt hope! Hope and certainty that I would go back to my origin, twenty years late but ten years early. I still had time to get there before I would enter the void. I still had time, hope and a licence, a licence that was like the bible to me, it held every prophecy I needed to have to ascend, not to heaven, but north, back up the river, into the mountain, the source.*

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    I had a car at my apartment, my hotel if you will, I would call it a temporally living place, away from where I belonged. The car was an old one. One I bought on budget, in a time where money mattered to me and conservation of it was a necessity. Never the less, that vehicle, however crude, would deliver me to my goal, and that was all that mattered.

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    On the 20th of March 2006 I set out on my journey. I spent 5 years in that hospital, staring at the white washed walls and the lonely beds which other poor souls like me would rest their heads. I felt my body grow weaker everyday and If I waited longer... I would die in that place. I could not end my senses and existence in vain.

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    I put they keys in the car's ignition and both the engine and my heart roared with ambition I set into gear to reach my ultimatum. From London to Scotland I would make it.

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    It got me thinking: How many people had done this before me? Had others left their prisons and fled to die in peace somewhere else? It seemed like something that would have happened a lot, why would anyone want to end their story trapped in such a plain horrid place? I somehow believed that to be true. I was following in the footsteps of ghosts, walking along a well trodden path to a different destination, a better place. It was like the journey I would make from life to death. I knew so many others had left life and I knew that most were at peace. It comforted me to know that I was not to be alone. Although they had all long since gone away, they still reminded me I would soon follow in that path, the right path. With my foot on the gas and my hands at the wheel I would travel, beginning to end, start to finish. I would walk the marathon of life, to Loch Hollen.

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    At first it was hard. I wanted to get home in one night. That was not easy. As I got weaker, my days grew shorter and I needed to sleep. Each day I would wake tired and remain so until I slept. I could only drive for about two hours a day before failing to my need for resting. At first I thought I was lazy and dumb but it quickly became clear I was indeed dying and it was likely I would die at the measly age of twenty six. I already accepted that I was going to die when I was still in hospital but actually feeling the effects of myself slowly losing my grasp regained my fear. It would not affect my journey to the field but it would harm me. I did in that moment realise, be it human nature or my own reasoning, that I didn't want to die.*

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    Five days after starting my journey I reached the border. I was almost home. I hurried my ascent as fatigue would stop me soon; if I did not make it by the end of the next day, I would never make it at all. It frightened me.*

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    My eyes would not open fully anymore and my hands would not lift to the skies. I could not run or walk for more than ten minutes and every time I moved it felt like I was held back by a heavy weight. My breath was slowed drastically and it felt like I was becoming a city. I could no longer take a breath of fresh air, lungs ready, mouth open. I would cough if I did. If felt like I was industrial now, my lungs replaced with oil rigs and power plants. My blood became tar, black, slimy and dead. I was the one thing I hated, the dead land of nooses, the breathless monster. And I hated it, I hated myself. It felt like if I did step into my breathing field it would be an oxymoron, a clash of opposites. It felt like despite my intentions and desires, I would be trespassing, standing in a place I did not belong. The boat was unsuitable for the trip ahead, it was unsailable! I did not deserve to go home, but still I carried on.*

    *

    I had a calendar in my head. A calendar that ended in two days. It was all I needed. It was all I got. In the land where people live to be one hundred and twenty five there was me, with two days left. I could not bring myself to continue, nor stop for that matter and because of that I remained at constant speed. Ambition was my only battery and once I got to the field I would likely collapse, batteries dry, lungs depleted. My world would soon be ending and I could not comprehend that, I could never know what the end would be like. I had ended books and movies before but I could have always walked away from them. This no, I could hardly walk as it was. It was my final chapter, and the credits were soon to role, but it was not a screenplay that was ending, it was the one of a kind me. I would not be missed, no one knew me. I was too young to make life spanning bonds with others and too old to gain much pity from others. But then again, I didn't want pity, I wanted freedom, freedom to live. I guess that was the root of it. I just wanted to live. I was so close to the moon, but I wanted to go back, my feet would not allow me, they were smarter than my brain. They knew no matter what it was hopeless so I just kept going. Onward, to the end.

    *

    My possessions: A small white band, a set of informal clothing and a piece of paper. I wrote on the paper an explanation to another if they found my body and paired with the white band it explained it all. My white band was a reminder that I was not normal, I was broken. It was a watch, it told me the time. The time I would die. It didn't do it specifically, it just reminded me I would fall soon, and that was good enough for me. Though I never felt good, well, away from the field. On my last night I prepared for my departure. My mind was set and so was everything in the car. Over tge hill ahead was the field and would welcome me back, it will welcome me back. My clock comes to an end soon, and so do I. I had time to turn off the engine in the car and wait for day.

    *

    My last sunrise was beautiful. It slowly rose from behind the field, displaying it to me for the first time, it had not changed. I could see the grass move side to side like a calm sea in the orange light. That sun rise told me I was to go now. As the sun rose, I would fall. I was to walk untill my feet stopped me and I collapsed. And I would do that.*

    *

    Now I take each step like it is my last. Each step is my last. I breath for a last time inside the car and open the door. One last time and I hear it click.*

    *

    This is it.

    *

    I leave now unmooring my paper boat to sail on the sea of grass before me, carried by the momentum of the falling dominoes until the last one is struck, and my journey ends. If you are reading this, it already has. My boat shall sail me to the moon, but not back. On the moon I will find other boats, some large some small. The size of each correlates to the length of each person's lives. The paper, their stories, the structure, their order. My paper boat is large enough to take me in the winds. That was all I asked for. I would make it. All that mattered was that it would catch in the winds that are time to the dock ahead. There is no heaven or hell, Valhalla or Draugur, only me.My paper boat.And the moon.

    *

    I sail to the better shores now, out of existence and into the stream of emotion and thoughts. I am to be carried by memory, pushed by tears that those I hold close shed for me and driven by the bliss I call the scent of daises.*I need not say much goodbyes, my trip only just begins. It shall span more than a lifetime as nothing lasts more than a book, a memory.

    *

    I shall ask you once if you are reading this, do me a final favour, a gift I can never repay, a deaths wish:

    *

    Never forget me. Never forget anyone. Life is a tragedy. A beautiful tragedy. A tragedy that leads into a different world which is carried by those who recognise your existence.*

    *

    Existence in the plain after reality.I realise this now. It isn't death, its birth. I shall exit my mother's womb, exit the womb that is life and enter the next. I just need to breath. Breath.

    *

    Breath...

  2. #2
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    Good god is this purple.

    But on the other hand there's a ferocious skill driving it. It's like having a 900 horse power engine and just spinning the wheels rather than going anywhere. This reader couldn't make it all the way through this. This piece's mis-step is in its wordiness, its persistent 'telling' and its lack of a concept of economy. It is a veritable behemoth. You should've thought of your readers more- we don't want to be in the bleachers watching you spin the tires. We want to be in the passenger seat, along for the ride with you, checking out the pretty imagery. Think of how you can take us with you.





    J

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jack of Hearts View Post
    Good god is this purple.

    But on the other hand there's a ferocious skill driving it. It's like having a 900 horse power engine and just spinning the wheels rather than going anywhere. This reader couldn't make it all the way through this. This piece's mis-step is in its wordiness, its persistent 'telling' and its lack of a concept of economy. It is a veritable behemoth. You should've thought of your readers more- we don't want to be in the bleachers watching you spin the tires. We want to be in the passenger seat, along for the ride with you, checking out the pretty imagery. Think of how you can take us with you.





    J
    It is definitely on my mind to re-write it. I understand I did go a bit over board with the prose and its probably a good idea to get another character within the book, maybe another like my protagonist.

    I do like the idea of solitude that the character feels and I do like to make it as thought the only other character he can connect and talk to is the field but maybe that's a bad idea.
    Non the less I appreciate your opinion on this and I shall go through it and maybe change/re-write it.

  4. #4
    Registered User paradoxical's Avatar
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    I was wondering why you chose to go with this particular formatting?

    There's some real talent here, no doubt about that, but I found it very difficult to read all the way through. Still, I think you're on to something here, so I hesitate to recommend more traditional paragraphs and spacing. Just trying to understand, is all.
    "I have never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude." - Henry David Thoreau

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by paradoxical View Post
    I was wondering why you chose to go with this particular formatting?

    There's some real talent here, no doubt about that, but I found it very difficult to read all the way through. Still, I think you're on to something here, so I hesitate to recommend more traditional paragraphs and spacing. Just trying to understand, is all.
    It is my great weakness. I cannot for the life of me structure. I guess I kept my writing in blocks like individual thoughts, the mind wanders a lot and I kept the single "mind exploring" areas in each place. Its hard to explain, I guess its structured in the "i'll think for a while" *paragraph* "I'll think now aswell". Thats how I think I did it, it needs work. I'll revise through its format at some point.

  6. #6
    Original Poster Buh4Bee's Avatar
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    Brutal- like a ton of bricks. Couldn't sift through this- my apologies.
    Last edited by Buh4Bee; 03-02-2012 at 08:28 PM.

  7. #7
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    First thing I want you to do is grab your dictionary and look up the word
    "omphaloskepsis."

    Next thing I want you to do is to take your personal journal and hide it under
    your bed and leave it there for at least 48 hours. Journal writing is useful in the sense that it's when done judiciously, it is a kind of "warm up" exercise, similar to batting practice or practicing the scales on a keyboard. Unless you are the next Virginia Woolf or Doris Lessing, journal entries are seldom interesting for other readers who do not happen to live inside your head.

    It's true that creativity, including writing is about "self-expression" we should all keep in mind that the self is not as important as the other side of that compound noun--it's all about the expression, the "how" as opposed to the "what."

    What would be more readable than this present offering would be a more unified, less fragmentary short story. By that I mean a fictional narrative that contains a central narrator and a chief character (which could be--though not necessarily based on yourself, if your story is compelling enough.) The character really should be a flesh-and-blood human-like person or, say in the case of fantasy, a creature with whom human readers could possibly identify. Give him or her real senses (of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, and touch or "feeling" (in a palpable way.)

    Don't "tell" us about her--show us how she lives her life, not just how she "feels" about it. Let's see her in action with her fellow human beings.Let us listen in to her conversations through some dialogue. Give her a real voice. For God's sake, instead of merely a vague pronoun or a self-absorbed "I," give her a name.

    There should be some semblance of a "plot" in that something actually happens in the story; show us how to go from Point A to Point B, with some detours along the way. If there isn't any recognizable action, maybe your character can experience self-discovery or a revelation about others in her sphere or a new way of looking at the world.

    If the story has any emotional impact, let the reader experience it for herself. Don't construct a neon sign pointing to "Emotions!"

    Instead of dredging up something we've read or seen in the movies or TV a million times before, show us something brand new.

    Or-- if your story is about a rite of passage or an experience common to all of us, show it to us in a brand-new way: with a new style or a new form.

    Read all the contemporary short stories you can find. While you're reading them, ask yourself not only what the writer is trying to say to you, but how he's saying it. Read as much as you can about the art of fiction writing. Learn the craft.

    Bottom Line: Write the story that people want to read. Be honest with yourself: write the story you would want to read.


    Want more cheap advice?

    You Know I'll Stop Reading Your Short Story When. . .

    Show, Don't Tell
    Last edited by AuntShecky; 02-29-2012 at 04:21 PM.

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